Your law school personal statement…it needs to be, well, personal!

When writing your personal statement for law school, it’s a good idea to include a few school specific sentences about why each of the schools to which you are applying is interesting to you. This is not “why do I want to go to law school?” but rather “this is why your law school is a good fit for me.”

Here’s an example: You live in northern California, and are married. You wife works in Silicon Valley, and will most likely be the breadwinner while you are attending law school. So you are looking at Stanford, Boalt Hall, Hastings, Santa Clara, and a few other schools. Do your research on each of these schools. What are they known for? Do they have a particular law review for which you would like to write? A specialization or curriculum focus that is appealing to you? Find out what sets that school apart from all the others, and then use that in your essay to demonstrate real interest in the school. Proximity to family, location near the beach, or easy access to mountain biking aren’t serious, academic, or professional reasons.

If you are applying right after graduation from college, chances are you don’t mind moving to another location to attend law school. However, if you are a few years out, are settled somewhere, and perhaps have a family, then uprooting your life might not be appealing. You will understandably look for law schools in your area. But no matter if you are 22 or 42, no matter what stage of life you might be in, location really shouldn’t be the main motivation for wanting to attend a school. You want your adcom to read your essay and walk away feeling that you have really given your school selections a lot of thought and have chosen based on serious and substantive data, not convenience.

The ancillary part of this equation: you do not want your reasons to be so generic that the inclusion of the name of any law school in the sentence still makes sense. An example of this might be, “XYZ is particularly appealing to me because of its renowned reputation, outstanding faculty, and exceptional placement of graduates in their chosen career field.” You can make this statement about almost any school; doing so weakens your essay and gives the readers the impression that you don’t think their school is so special after all.

Make your essay personal. Make it substantive. And you will make it memorable as thoughtful, deep, and well-researched.

By Catherine Cook, published author and former Duke Law admissions officer. Do you need help with your applications? The consultants at Accepted have helped thousands of applicants gain admission to their top choice undergraduate programs, and would be happy to help you! Contact us now to get started.